The effects of bad
fruit, however, upon the constitution, and consequently upon the
national character, are so injurious that every liberal man must regret
that any people, either from ignorance or obligation, should be forced
to have recourse to anything so fatal, and must feel that it is the duty
of everyone who professes to be a philanthropist to propagate and
encourage a taste for good fruit throughout all countries of the globe.
A vast number of centuries before Popanilla had the fortune to lose his
mistress's lock of hair, and consequently to become an ambassador to
Vraibleusia, the inhabitants of that island, then scarcely more
civilised than their new allies of Fantaisie were at present, suffered
very considerably from the trash which they devoured, from that innate
taste for fruit already noticed. In fact, although there are
antiquaries who pretend that the Vraibleusians possessed some of the
species of wild plums and apples even at that early period, the majority
of inquirers are disposed to believe that their desserts were solely
confined to the wildest berries, horse-chestnuts, and acorns.
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